Category: 3. Business

Computers have taken the crown in chess, Go and poker, but when it comes to competitive coding, humans still have the edge – just.

Earlier this month Przemysław Dębiak, a Polish coder and mind sports champion, narrowly clinched a victory over OpenAI’s entrant in the AtCoder World Tour Finals 2025, in Tokyo. However, the elite coder, who goes by the online name Psyho, predicts he may be the last human to win the prestigious title due to the incredible pace of technological progress.

“That’s probable,” said Psyho, 41, who previously worked at OpenAI before retiring five years ago. “I would prefer not, mostly because I like these competitions and knowing there’s this magical entity that can do it better than me would be a little bit frustrating.”

There is an irony, Psyho acknowledged, that coders have contributed to their own professional demise.

“Before the contest, I tweeted ‘Live by the sword, die by the sword’,” he said. “I helped developing AI and I would be the one who would be the loser of the match. Although I won, in the end, for now.”

The AtCoder euristic division included 11 human participants (invited on the basis of world rankings) and a coding algorithm designed by OpenAI, which finished in second place, 9.5% behind Psyho’s winning score. Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, tweeted his congratulations.

The 10-hour contest involves solving a complex optimisation problem. A classic in the genre is the “travelling salesman problem”, where the salesman needs to figure out the shortest possible route between multiple cities, each visited once. Typically, these problems are simple to state, but finding an optimal solution is computationally very complex. And so, while ChatGPT is now routinely used to write boilerplate code, the AI’s performance on an open-ended logic problem will be viewed as impressive.

“At the current state, humans – top humans, to be clear – are still much better at reasoning and solving complex problems,” said Psyho. But humans are “bottlenecked” by how quickly they can type code, while an AI can try out lots of small adjustments very rapidly.

“The model is like cloning a single human multiple times and working in parallel,” he said. “AI might not be the smartest right now but it’s definitely the fastest. And sometimes multiplying a single average person many many times produces a better result than a single, special human being.”

The result comes as major tech companies, including Meta and Microsoft, are turning to AI to write software code. Dario Amodei, the Anthropic CEO, warned in May that AI could take 20% of white-collar jobs in the next one to five years.

“Every profession has this right now, more or less,” said Psyho. “Some people have it coming right now – all of the white collar jobs. For manual jobs, robotics is lagging by several years.”

Like many in the industry, Psyho is ambivalent about the potential impact of ever more powerful AI models. “We have a tonne of issues,” he said. “Disinformation, social impact, humans not having a purpose in life. Historically society moves at a very slow pace. Technological progress right now is moving at a faster and faster and faster pace.”

It was just before lunchtime on its third day of operation, and the line outside Elon Musk’s new Tesla Diner in Hollywood already stretched to nearly 100 people.

The restaurant has been billed as a “retro-futuristic” drive-in where you can grab a high-end burger and watch classic films on giant screens, all while charging your Tesla.

After months of buildup and controversy, the diner had suddenly opened on Monday, at 4.20pm, the kind of stoner boy joke that Musk is well-known for. Hundreds of fans lined up to try burgers in Cybertruck-shaped boxes, or take photos of the Optimus robot serving popcorn on the roof deck of the gleaming circular diner.

But that was for the grand opening. Less than 48 hours later, when we visited for lunch, the Tesla Diner experience was less a futuristic fantasy than a case study in how to fail with impunity. Many parts of the experience were breaking down, the food was mediocre, yet the fans were still cheerfully lining up to buy merch.

The line to get into the diner on Wednesday morning was so long, an employee told us, in part because of technical problems. The app that allowed Tesla drivers to order from their cars was glitching, so the diner was “prioritizing” Tesla owners who had to come inside to order instead. This meant that non-Tesla owners in the walk-up line might need to wait as long as two to three hours before we got our food.

I expected at least a few people to leave the walk-up line immediately, but the only ones who did were two families of Tesla owners who went back to order from within their cars. Even if the app didn’t work for them, they would still get their food faster. The hierarchy was clear: things were broken for everyone, but owners of Musk products had to suffer slightly less.

The rest of us kept waiting in the hot sun. “Retro-futurism”, in this case, seemed to mean gorgeous, Tesla-inspired, mid-century modern architecture coupled with wait times that would shutter an ordinary McDonald’s. An episode of Star Trek was playing on the giant drive-in movie screens, but the best entertainment available was watching tricked-out Cybertrucks arrive and depart. I counted at least six when I arrived, and more kept appearing: a neon orange Cybertruck with Texas plates, another floating on giant custom rims. I did not spot a single anti-Musk protester, though social media posts were advertising protests outside the diner later in the week.

‘It is what it is’

Musk’s special projects have often unfolded with a degree of chaos. Most recently, his attempt to dismantle the large parts of the US government ended with him feuding with the president he had spent nearly $300m to elect.

Serving high-end burgers to Tesla fans while they charge their electric cars should be much easier than launching space rockets, developing brain implants or running a social media platform that is not overrun with hate speech and harassment. And Musk’s diner operation partners, the Los Angeles chef Eric Greenspan, who advised Mr Beast Burger, and restaurateur Bill Chait, of République and Tartine Bakery, have impressive food industry credentials.

But the billionaire CEO tends to make big promises and not quite fulfill them. That appeared to be true even for a tiny burger joint.

You don’t have to own a Tesla to order a meal at the diner, and its appeal clearly reached far beyond Tesla drivers. There were many people in the walk-up line on Wednesday with babies and small children, some of whom were particularly excited to be visiting the Tesla Diner after seeing videos about it online. While we all waited and waited, employees in branded T-shirts brought us glasses of water and paper menus.

Jake Hook, who runs a Los Angeles-focused “Diner Theory” social media account, had described the Tesla Diner menu to me as “all over the place”, with a combination of “very fast food shlocky” items combined with sandwiches made with “bread from Tartine”, the luxury California bakery. The diner also offers a mix of “own the libs” and “we are the libs” options: on the one hand, “Epic Bacon”, four strips of bacon are served with sauces as a meatfluencer alternative to french fries, and on the other, avocado toast and matcha lattes. There was a kale salad served in a cardboard Cybertruck: welcome to southern California.

“Diners are kind of a reflection of the community, and it doesn’t seem to really be that,” Hook told me over the phone. “It’s like a diner-themed restaurant.”

An employee gave the Wednesday walk-up line another update: they didn’t have chicken, waffles or milkshakes, or any of the “charged sodas”, which came with boba and maraschino cherries and extra caffeine.

“It gets better and better,” sighed a man behind me.

Josh Bates and his son Phoenix were in town for the day from Orange county, where they lived. “We are big Musk fans,” he said.

Phoenix, age 10, had been excited to visit the diner. “I never seen Elon Musk open a restaurant, so I just wanted to come here and see how the food is,” he explained.

But after waiting in line for 20 minutes and not getting much closer to ordering, Bates decided it was time to find somewhere else for lunch. “It’s the grand opening – things happen,” the father said. “It is what it is. They’re doing the best they can.”

Bates wasn’t the only Musk fan with this attitude. Ivan Daza, 36, who lived in Los Angeles, later told me that he had waited two hours the day before, only to be told around 6 or 7pm that the Tesla Diner’s kitchen was closed. He had brought his eight-year-old daughter back the next day to try again. She had seen the Tesla Diner on YouTube and was especially excited to see the Optimus robot. But it turned out that Optimus was not in operation.

Daza said he was surprised by the various problems the kitchen seemed to be having – he thought they would have a “plan B”. But he was pleased the diner offered an “experience”.

The prices, though expensive, weren’t that bad for Los Angeles. The burger was $13.50, without french fries. Later, as Daza ate the meal that had taken him two days to get, he grinned: “Delicious.”

The interior design was certainly closer to Disneyland than In-N-Out: all sleek and shining chrome, futuristic 1950s white chairs and tables, and beautifully designed lighting. The curved staircase up to the Skypad was decorated with robots in display cases on the wall. Inside a curved chrome window was what looked like a pretty ordinary, low-tech restaurant kitchen.

I had waited in line for a full hour before I could place my order. When I finally got to the register, I asked an employee to remind me what on the menu was actually available. She said I needed to check the screen in front of me – they had whatever was there. It turned out, contrary to what I had been told, that I could order both chicken and waffles.

After the long wait outside, my food arrived in about 10 minutes – much less than the three-hour wait I feared, but absurdly long for any fast-casual restaurant. A waffle, branded with the Tesla lightning bolt, was cold. The fried chicken had a tasty coating but was also cold. The heap of kale and tomatoes was only partially dressed with an odd dill-flavored dressing. The generic-brand cola tasted cheap and was served with a woke bamboo straw. But the food did come in elaborate Cybertruck boxes – and they were, to be honest, delightful.

While locals seemed to be forgiving of the new diner’s glitches, some tourists were less impressed. Rick Yin, 32, who was visiting Los Angeles from China with his mother, had stopped by the diner on their way to the airport to “grab a quick lunch” that had turned out not to be quick at all. Yin had also been excited to see the Optimus robot in action, and had hoped the diner would be “more hi-tech”. What he had found was “a regular restaurant”.

“It’s all right,” he said, while still waiting for his food. After eating, he said he liked the Cybertruck boxes: “That’s the only thing that’s worth it.”

Musk’s ‘retro-futurism’

I took my meal upstairs , to the Skypad, an open-air balcony with a view of the charging Teslas. The Twilight Zone was now playing on two giant screens. I sat down next to a steady line of people buying Tesla Diner merch: a $95 retro diner hoodie, $65 Tesla salt and pepper shakers, a $175 “levitating Cybertruck” figurine.

There was a large popcorn machine in front of me, which seemed to be where Optimus had been serving snacks on opening night. Musk had been posting on X earlier in the morning that “Optimus will bring the food to your car next year” and suggesting the robot might be dressed in a “cute” retro outfit.

In reality, Optimus was nowhere in sight. The robot was “out today”, an employee told me later, as if the pricey piece of machinery were a human celebrity with a busy schedule. “Maybe tomorrow.”

“Is it possible to get some popcorn regardless of the robot?” a woman asked.

“It’s probably old popcorn,” an employee told her regretfully.

A different employee warned me that I could not walk down the same staircase I had taken up to the Skypad because it was too crowded and that “everyone’s colliding with each other and trays and milkshakes”. I would have to go down another way: a bland flight of stairs without any hi-tech decoration.

During a Tesla earnings call on Wednesday, as the company disclosed declining revenue and profits, Musk highlighted his new burger palace as a success: “Diners don’t typically get headline news around Earth,” he bragged. He also called the diner “a shiny beacon of hope in an otherwise sort-of bleak urban landscape”. (It is located on Santa Monica Boulevard, in a neighborhood full of high-end art galleries.)

I’d had plenty of time in the diner line to think about “retro-futuristic” experiences, and how good a description that was, not so much for this very ordinary diner, but for the rightwing political project that Musk had joined. We were now moving into a future that offered tank-like electric cars and on-demand drone deliveries, and also a resurgence of measles outbreaks and women dying from preventable pregnancy-related complications.

But continuing to function in the United States right now requires being very good at compartmentalization. I tucked away the cardboard Cybertruck lids to show my co-workers, threw away the Tesla waffles, and went on with my day. Nothing works properly here any more, but hey, it’s an experience.

Nearly two in every five phones stolen in Europe are taken in the UK, according to data collated an insurance firm.

An analysis of claims made to the American insurance company SquareTrade showed that 39% of all phone thefts across the company’s 12 European markets were in Britain. This was despite the UK only making up 10% of the company’s European customers.

The data revealed that phone theft claims in the UK had increased by 425% since June 2021 and 42% of phone thefts in the UK occurred in London. This equated to 16% of all phone thefts in Europe.

The data, reported by the Times, comes amid growing concern about phone snatching, with police saying gangs are now stealing handsets as an easier way to make money than drug dealing.

The Metropolitan police said about 80,000 phones were stolen in London last year, describing the phenomenon as an “organised criminal enterprise”. The stolen devices had a street value of about £20m, with iPhones being targeted most frequently.

James Conway, a Met police commander specialising in phone thefts, said phone theft had become more prevalent among gangs partly due to a growing demand for such gadgets in overseas markets, creating opportunities for “huge profitability”.

Conway said: “These are the same sort of gangs that are also running county lines operations and dealing [drugs] but are getting increasingly involved in robbery and theft … They can make a far greater profit than from dealing drugs in the same period of time with a lower risk from a criminal justice perspective.”

The commander added: “The sort of sentences you see for drug trafficking or drug dealing offences, and those you might receive for a series of thefts as a young person are very different.”

The police have called for phone companies to cut off cloud services on stolen phones in an effort to reduce their resale value. Representatives of Google and Apple told the House of Commons science and technology committee last month that security features were already in place to protect customer data.

Simon Wingrove, a software engineering manager at Google, said its system for such situations was “robust and works very well”.

Gary Davis, a senior director in regulatory and legal at Apple, said the company was concerned about the potential for fraud. He said there was a risk of bad actors attempting to obtain data and the power to delete accounts for blackmailing victims.

The Apple representative added the company had invested “many hundreds of millions” in designing protections for its customers against phone theft.

In the modern age of technology and globalization, the aviation industry is facing a silent threat in the form of cyberattacks. The aviation industry has undertaken a massive digital transformation in the last two decades to enhance operational effectiveness and the experience of travelers. Thales’ 2025 report revealed a drastic 600% increase in digital attacks at the global level in just one year. On 9th July, Qantas Air faced a digital breach that compromised the personal data of 5.7 million customers, further exposing underlying cybersecurity vulnerabilities in this industry. The rising frequency of cyberattacks in the global aviation industry due to heavy digitalization is equally alarming for Pakistan, signaling the need to strengthen its cyber defense promptly.

The threat landscape is expanding in this industry, as it has been proclaimed that cyber-attacks targeted around 65 percent of airports and 35 percent of airlines over the last 24 years. This indicates that the threat vectors, including distributed denial-of-service (DDoS), phishing, malware, and ransomware, are impacting the aviation industry, ranging from targeting an entity to widespread attacks on complete systems. Notably, the most prevalent cyber threat to the aviation industry is ransomware, as a report says it alone caused 41 percent of data loss and 38 percent of operational disruption in 2024.

In the face of evolving threats, the aviation-related international regulatory bodies have established several cybersecurity frameworks. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) adopted a multifaceted strategy based on cooperation, governance, regulations, and capacity building. The Federal Aviation Authority (FAA), on the other hand, unveiled its cybersecurity strategy, which focuses on protecting airspace systems and preventing any digital attack with a Zero Trust architecture, and introduced new rules to protect the cyber infrastructure. Other international bodies are also working to mitigate the surging threats, including the International Air Transport Association (IATA), which developed a shared cyber risk requirement for all stakeholders, and the European Union (EU), which has designed an information security management system to improve cybersecurity that will be operational in 2026. Despite numerous attempts to secure a digital space through certain policies and frameworks, the threats are still looming, which requires a holistic approach for robust digital security in the aviation sector.

As cybersecurity is a cross-cutting issue that requires the support of a team, different parts of the industry need to work together to detect, mitigate, and respond. While international bodies are establishing regulations and adopting rules to minimize cyber threats, states and airline companies also need to cooperate to improve aviation digital security. For this, they can incorporate digital defense strategies and technologies, including the implementation of network encryption and segmentation strategies that secure sensitive data and ensure protection against attacks by immediately denying unauthorized access to spread any threat vectors. Also, Digital twin technology can be operationalised in the aviation sector, as it will create a virtual replica of any operational technology that further assists the security teams in detecting potential cyber threats and taking quick action. In addition, the attacks on aviation supply chains are a serious risk that is often underestimated. To deal with them, there is a need to enable security audits that will assess the security practices of suppliers and evaluate their compliance with defined standards, along with deploying layered perimeter defenses within the network systems of the supply chain to enhance its security through encryption and access control.

The cyber vulnerabilities exposed in the global aviation industry have taught Pakistan the lesson that it needs to enhance the security and resilience of the aviation sector before it experiences a major breach. To overcome digital threats, in the short term, Pakistan should invest in building a skilled digital workforce for the aviation sector and conduct regular assessments of the digital systems incorporated at various international airports. In addition, the Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority (PCAA) is relying on legacy systems that are susceptible to cyber threats. It has to adopt a cybersecurity-focused technology modernization program that complements NextGen technologies, such as artificial intelligence that can detect digital intrusions much faster than humans.

At the long-term level, Pakistan should abide by the rules and regulations provided by the international aviation regulatory bodies, along with the adoption of key digital defense strategies and technologies discussed above. Likewise, Pakistan should establish a cybersecurity infrastructure program for the strategic defense of airports. This can be done through offering financial support for all the international airports across the country, and in collaboration with the Ministry of Defence (MOD), PCAA assesses cyber security vulnerabilities of these airports and takes appropriate steps to address them. Insights from these efforts can be further shared with key stakeholders, such as airlines, aviation suppliers, and key technicians, to strengthen industry-wide cyber resilience.

The silent threats in the form of digital intrusions and breaches are undermining the security of the aviation industry. While these vulnerabilities can be addressed through increasing cooperation among international bodies, states, and key stakeholders, along with the adoption of network strategies and layered perimeter defences at a global level. The most important aspect, in the context of Pakistan, is that it needs to incorporate both short-term and long-term countermeasures to lay the pathway for sustainable digital modernization in the future.

The European Central Bank kept interest rates unchanged for the first time in more than a year as it looks for clarity on the European Union’s trade ties with the US.

Policymakers pushing for another cut in interest rates face an uphill battle, with inflation at 2% and the economy withstanding trade turbulence, Bloomberg reported. A hold looks like the baseline for September after eight reductions since June 2024.

On November 29, 1972, a fire broke out in the high-rise Rault Center, in downtown New Orleans. As firefighters struggled to reach the blaze and television cameras rolled, five women trapped in a beauty salon on the 15th floor had to make an impossible decision: remain in the burning building, or leap.

One by one, they jumped, aiming for the roof of a neighbouring six-storey building. Four of the women died.

At the time, a 46-year-old engineer and fellow New Orleanian had been toying with an idea that might have saved them. The tragedy spurred John T Scurlock into action.

He wanted to engineer an inflatable cushion that could provide a safe landing for people plunging from great heights. But to do it, he needed the help of his sons.

First, he got them to push 45kg (100-pound) rolled-up pieces of vinyl off the top of his office building and onto the cushion he had designed below. The vinyl was attached to an accelerometer, which helped John calculate the weight the cushion could absorb at different speeds.

Once he was confident it was safe, it was time for the next step: having his sons jump off the roof.

“We were like 10, 12, 14 years old, and we were jumping off a building into a big airbag. It was a lot of fun,” recalls Jeff Scurlock, now 66.

‘Space pillow’

The following year, John patented the safety air cushion, the huge, inflatable pad still used today by fire brigades from New York to Tokyo to rescue people from fires and deaths by suicide.

But it was not his first invention. In fact, his life-saving inflatable was drawn from his earlier invention: the ubiquitous fair attraction known by many different names – the bouncy castle, moon bounce, bounce house or space walk, depending on where you are bouncing.

In the Scurlock home, it was known as the “space pillow”.

A year after John filed a patent for the core of what would become the space pillow, he started working at a NASA facility in New Orleans. It was 1961, and NASA had opened its doors three years earlier in response to the Soviets pulling ahead in the space race with the launch of the world’s first satellite, Sputnik 1.

The US space agency was abuzz with projects exploring the possibility of spaceflight, and by 1960, it had developed an interest in designing a crewed, inflatable space station, thought by many to be a necessary first step in reaching the moon.

Large, rigid space stations would require multiple rocket trips to bring up the parts, but plastic inflatables were considered light, strong and easy to transport. An inflatable space station could be launched into space with a single booster and unfurl once in orbit. (A meteorite-resistant inflatable space module was sent up to the International Space Station in 2016, and NASA engineers are hoping to build a semi-permanent moon habitat out of inflatables.)

John found himself in the middle of this innovation, which continued even in his spare time, when he would sketch designs for and stitch his proto-space pillow, using a commercial sewing machine he set up in a pit in the ground of his garage so he could haul the heavy vinyl material towards him as he stitched.

When he assembled an early, homemade space pillow for his young sons to play with in the backyard, it soon became a massive hit with the local children.

“We were very popular kids then, because we had one permanently in our backyard,” says Jeff. “The whole neighbourhood would come and jump on it.”

Jeff says it was his mother, Francis, who recognised how much children loved the inflatable and got the idea to market it. Eventually, John left his job to concentrate full-time on the “space pillow”.

Inflatable solutions

In 1968, they started selling the invention to fairs around the country. But the safety risks were serious. “It was a nightmare, safety-wise,” says John’s grandson, Mials, 35. “It had no support, no netting, no way to keep you on it.”

When a carnival worker broke his neck and died, the company was “sued out of existence”, Mials says.

No longer a small backyard venture, the design needed protective features.

John set to work designing improvements: the space pillow grew columns, cushioning walls, netting around the sides and a roof, making it far safer. In 1972, the last year man walked on the moon, the family launched a new company, called Space Walk Inflatables, to manufacture and rent inflatables in the Louisiana city of Kenner.

Today, the global bounce house market is worth $4bn, driven by the popularity of rentals.

But as his invention ballooned in popularity, John also turned his attention to solving problems with heavy-duty inflatables.

Inflatable engineering is deceptively complex and requires answering mathematical questions to turn a 2D fabric into a 3D shape, says Dr Benjamin Gorissen, a professor of inflatable mechanics at KE Leuven in Belgium.

John loved numbers, recalls Mials, and was “a guy who could do the math”. He filed patents on several structures, including one intended for underwater pipe welding for offshore oil platforms, which resembles a human heart with someone working inside.

“Whatever news article would happen, he’d be in his office, sketching out a solution,” says Mials.

Jeff recalls his father reading about sunken submarines in the newspaper, and then working on an invention that could help to resurface them.

Up until John’s death in 2008, “he never really stopped working”, says Jeff. His last creation in his 80s was a giant inflatable palm tree, a kind of air sculpture meant to provide shade over a 2.8 square metre (30sq ft) area.

John did not set out to build a business empire, Jeff and Mials, who now run the business, note. Though bouncy castles remain the core of their business, the Scurlocks continue to produce safety air cushions, which have a more complex structure. Their most heavy-duty product is certified for 20 storeys, or 200 feet (60m).

Since it was invented, the safety air cushion has saved thousands of lives around the world, but it all began with an early, devoted pioneer urging his children to jump off the roof.

This article is part of ‘Ordinary items, extraordinary stories’, a series about the surprising stories behind well-known items.